T-34: Russia's Armoured Spearhead

By Robert Jackson

Von Kleist, one of Hitlers best panzer leaders, described the T-34 as The finest tank in the world. There could have been no finer accolade from a commander whose panzer divisions experienced the full fury of its devastating attacks on the Eastern Front. Without doubt, the T-34 was one of the best tanks of all time, and in this volume in the TankCraft series Robert Jackson tells its story. He describes its conception in the 1930s, its development during the Second World War, and its postwar deployment to over thirty countries within the Soviet sphere of influence.His book is an excellent reference work for the modeler, providing details of available kits, together with artworks showing the color schemes applied to the T-34 by its operators throughout the world. Photographs, many in color, illustrate the T-34 in action and there is a section dealing with the range of armored vehicles that were built using the T-34 chassis.Robert Jackson's introduction to the T-34 is necessary reading for tank enthusiasts and tank modelers alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526711342

Robert Jackson

Born in 1941 in North Yorkshire, Robert Jackson was educated at Richmond School, Yorkshire. He is a full-time writer and lecturer, mainly on aerospace and defence issues, and was the defence correspondent for North of England Newspapers. He is the author of more than 60 books on aviation and military subjects, including operational histories on famous aircraft such as the Mustang, Spitfire and Canberra. A former pilot and navigation instructor, he was a squadron leading in the RAF Volunteer Reserve.

Book preview

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Although the Imperial Russian Army experimented with an unsuccessful tank design known as the Tsar Tank in 1916, operational tanks did not make their appearance in Russia until 1919, when the British and French supplied small numbers of Mk V and Renault FT tanks to the Loyalist forces during the Russian Civil War. Both types saw limited action in the north and south, the two main fronts where Allied intervention forces were in action on the Loyalist side against the Bolsheviks. One of the most dramatic actions occurred on 30 June 1919, when a single Mk V commanded by a British officer, Major Ewen Cameron Bruce, drove into the city of Tsaritsyn, causing panic among the defending Bolsheviks and bringing about their surrender.

The effectiveness of the tank demonstrated in this action and others on the Petrograd Front, was not lost on the Bolsheviks who, ultimately victorious in the Civil War, lost no time in creating an armoured force. Such a force had in fact existed on paper since January 1918 as a department of the embryo Red Army, and as the Civil War drew to a close it made use of a number of captured Vickers and FT tanks, together with some Austin armoured cars, abandoned by the Allied Intervention Forces. Numbers of Renault FT tanks were used in the Russo-Polish war of 1919–21, a conflict that underlined the need for a strong armoured force capable of penetrating enemy defensive lines.

After relying on foreign tank imports (mainly French FT-17s) for some time, the new Soviet government, established in 1922, gave high priority to the creation of tank design and production facilities, and to this end a Tank Bureau was formed in May 1924 to oversee the development of indigenous Soviet tanks. In the same year the Bureau issued a specification for a light infantry support vehicle, a three-ton two-man tank with 16mm of armoured protection and fitted with a 37mm main gun. An unusual feature was the turret armament arrangement, in which the 37mm main armament and the machine gun were offset at 45° to one another.

Based on the Renault FT and powered by a 35hp engine of Fiat design, the first prototype was designated T-16, which emerged as the T-18 after some improvements to the engine and hull design had been incorporated. The first prototype bore the manufacturer’s designation MS-1 which stood for Maliy Soprovozdiniya (Small Support Vehicle) Type 1.

The T-18 was the first operational armoured fighting vehicle of Soviet design, and although it suffered from many inadequacies, including being underpowered and under-gunned, it nevertheless gave the Russians experience in tank design and construction which they had previously lacked. The prototype was built in 1928 and entered service in the following year. Production, which was undertaken by the Leningrad Bolshevik Plant (Factory 232, formerly the Obukhov State Plant) ended in 1931. After its withdrawal from front-line service in 1932, the T-18 was allocated to military training units.

Although incorporating features that were not present in the FT-17, the T-18 was still essentially a copy of the French tank, while the T-26, produced in large numbers in the Soviet Union from 1930, was a faithful copy of the British Vickers 6-ton light tank. Not only did it provide a substantial nucleus of Russian tank men with practical experience of operating what was then a modern armoured fighting vehicle, it also led directly to many improvements that would be incorporated in later generations of Soviet AFVs. But the T-26 was still a foreign design, and it was not until the appearance of the 29-ton T-28 in 1931 that the Red Army could claim to field a tank that was truly Russian in concept.

The prototype was armed with a 45mm gun, which was replaced by a 76mm weapon in the first production model, the T-28A, which was issued to Soviet armoured units from 1933. The next production variant, the T-28B, which made its appearance in 1938, featured a new long-barrelled 76mm weapon with a better performance. The main armament was housed in one large turret that was flanked by two smaller ones housing machine guns, an arrangement that was fashionable in the early 1930s. All T-28s were equipped with radio, which was mostly lacking in the tanks of other nations at that time, and had mounts for anti-aircraft machine guns. The T-28’s participation in the Winter War of 1939–40, when it suffered grievous losses to Finnish antitank weaponry, revealed the inadequacy of its armour, which was upgraded in a series of hastily implemented programmes.

Despite its deficiencies, the T-28 was the world’s first mass-produced medium tank, and the vehicle that set Russian tank designers on the road that would lead to the T-34.

The large, unwieldy Tsar Tank, developed from 1914, used a tricycle design featuring two massive front wheels and a smaller rear wheel instead of tracks. Trials showed it to be underpowered and vulnerable, and it was abandoned.

Numbers of British and French tanks were used by both sides in the Russian Civil War. This British Vickers Mk V is preserved at Kharkov in the Ukraine.

The T-28 multi-turreted tank was one of the world’s first medium tanks, and was an infantry support vehicle designed to break through fortified defences. This T-28E is pictured at the Parola Tank Museum, Finland. (Balcer, public domain)

The Vickers A1E1 was produced only as a prototype, but its multi-turreted configuration influenced other designs such as the Soviet T-35 heavy tank, which was built in limited numbers. (Bovington Tank Museum)

A T-26 Model 1933 at the museum ‘Breaching of the Leningrad Blockade’ near Kirovsk, Leningrad Oblast. This tank was raised from a river bottom at Nevsky Pyatachok in May 2003.

The MS-1, seen here at the Moscow Museum of Armed Forces, was the prototype of the T-18 and was the first Soviet-designed tank, although it was based on the Renault FT17. It was in production from 1928 to 1931.

The Vickers E tank, also known as the Vickers 6-tonner, was the vehicle on which the Soviet T-26 was based.

The Renault FT17 was probably the best light tank of its day, and was widely used by a number of countries, including the USSR.

Development and Design

The inauguration of the first Soviet Five Year